Cashing.] 41 .Z [Nov. 6, 



characteristics, as influenced by given or specific phj'siographic areas. 

 As aftbrding a concrete example of this kind, of the interrelation of man 

 and a particular kind of environment, I know of few cases in which the 

 evidences are so direct and pronounced and I may add, unmistakable, 

 as they are in the peculiar art remains which we discovered in this not 

 less peculiar region of the keys. 



I have presented not a few illustrations of this influence as giving rise 

 to key building, and some phases of the life itself of the people who built 

 the keys. Yet in closing I wish once more to recur to the subject. In 

 a preceding note, and in former writings (published in periodicals and 

 in the Reports of the Bureau of Ethnology, on the Zuiii Indians, and the 

 ancient Cliff" Dwellers, and the development of Pueblo culture in general), 

 I have shown how the desert of our great southwest and the necessity 

 for overcoming there, the difficulties of existence in an arid waste, may 

 account for the high development towards civilization of the peoples 

 who for a long time dwelt there. It is, indeed, safe for us to infer from 

 these and later studies, especially those of Prof. W J McGee, that the 

 very beginnings of true civilization, in the matter, for example, of agri- 

 culture, must ever have been made in desert environments more or 

 less like these, more or less, also, in the same manner. 



Well, so in other ways it was, in the wild region of sea, the great 

 sea-waste wherein the ancient key dwellers reclaimed and built their 

 homes. It was as truly a desert, not of the dry land, but of the waters, 

 and likewise it both foi'ced and fostered, rapid and high development of 

 the peoples who entered it and elected or w^ere driven to abide in it. 

 That the island homes of these peoples, the shell keys, might be built, 

 and in the ample water courts thereof a constant supply of fish be pro- 

 vided, it w^as even more necessary, after such beginnings as I have pic- 

 tured on a former page, for men to unite in each single enterprise ; the 

 which led directly, not only to increased communality,but also to a higher, 

 and in this case, an effective degree of organization. The arid deserts 

 have led men like the Pueblos to continued agricultural effort wherein 

 it was necessary for them to closely unite in the watering or irrigating 

 of the soil ; and concomitantly it has led them to a high degree of archi- 

 tectural development in not only granary-, and house- construction itself, 

 but also in protective building, fortification, against those who, tempted 

 by the ample stores thus garnered, sought to rob them ; and finally, it 

 has led, through these two causes for united effort, to high communal 

 organization and high sociologk and sacerdotal government. But the 

 men of the desert sea wastes, here among the keys, were beset by dan- 

 gers far greater than those of human foemen, necessitating far more 

 arduous communal eff'ort in the construction of places, rather than 

 houses, of harbors and storm defenses, rather than fortified dwellings ; 

 and the construction of these places under such difficulty and stress, led 

 to far more highly concerted action and therefore developed necessarily 

 not only sociologic organization nearly as high, but perforce a far higher 

 executive governmental organization. 



